It is an absolute blessing to be able to create our forever home. But here are 10 Things I Learned While Building Our Dream Home.
Don’t get me wrong here, I feel fortunate that I was able to build a home that is completely our style and has all of our families needs in mind. However, building our dream home was daunting at times. The whole process was not always roses and daisies.
Building a new home was a monumental task. There was so much planning! I am not going to try to fool you here. It is not for the faint of heart. It is totally worth the adventure though. But here are my thoughts on what I learned from this experience.
So, here are the 10 Things I Learned While Building Our Dream Home…
1. Hire a General Contractor
Unless you don’t have a regular job and you have unlimited free time, it is nearly impossible to GC a project like this yourself. You literally constantly need to be on-site or things will never get done. Also, you really need to be pretty knowledgeable of the building process itself.
Subcontractors routinely try to cut corners or don’t even show up for that matter. So a general contractor keeps everything in check and helps the project to move forward.
2. You Need to Communicate Your Ideas
Nobody knows what you are envisioning in your head. Your builder and contractors are not mind readers. If you envision 10-foot ceilings in your bedroom but tell your builder you want 8 feet, you are going to get 8-foot ceilings. It’s kind of a no-brainer. Make sure you talk through your ideas with your builder during the contract stage. And then make sure everything is in the contract that you want. There are so many details when building that it will make your head spin! You will forget things that you agreed on. Trust me.
You can get some inspiration from some of my home decor pins on my Pinterest.
3. You Will Go Over on Your Allowances
No matter how good we thought we did on the contract, we did not get enough on our allowances at all. We went over in almost every category. Before we started the project we had no idea how much things cost so we thought the allowances in the contract were good. We were wrong! And we don’t have million-dollar taste here either.
4. You Will Want to Kill Each Other at Times
The struggle is real here people! This s**t is stressful. You will be at each other’s throats at times. It is inevitable. You are literally in the thick of it so to speak. And for a long time. Our build took us a little over a year.
5. There Will be Some Things You Hate
Not everything will be perfect no matter how hard you try. There will inevitably be something you chose that you hate in the end. You got to just roll with it and not get stuck on the small stuff because in the grand scope of things it will probably not even matter.
We spent so much time designing our outdoor deck to get the maximum view of the mountains behind us. Once it was built we were kicking ourselves in the you know what because it didn’t come out how we envisioned it.
6. Put More Storage Space Than You Need
You may think you have enough closets and storage space, but you don’t. The end! There is never enough. Design with more storage space than you think you will need. Our basement storage area was much smaller than we thought it was going to be in our heads when we were designing the plans.
7. Things Will Look Worse Before They Look Better
Spaces look so light and huge during the framing stage. Obviously, this is because you can see through walls. Literally. Then the drywall goes up and panic immediately sets in. The space looks teeny tiny and dark. I immediately felt like we royally screwed up the design. But then floors go in and the paint goes on the wall and things start to look normal again. There will be ups and downs throughout the process.
8. Let Your Gut Instinct Guide You at Times
Even though you may not be an expert builder and know everything, trust your gut. If you feel like something is not right, speak up. Remember, this is nobody’s dream home but yours. And if you don’t like how things are going with something, say it sister.
9. Compromise Will Happen
Sometimes the compromise will be between you and your significant other. Or sometimes between you and your builder. But it will happen. Unless your significant other and you are the exact same person, you will have different tastes in things. You might have to bend a little to make each other happy.
10. You Can Never Design the Perfect House
You just have to accept this one. Unless you have unlimited money you will never design the absolutely perfect house. There are many things that I wanted so bad but “the buck stops here” as they say. In order to stay in control of the budget, some things have to go. It is what it is.
There you have it! 10 Things I Learned While Building Our Dream Home.
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Happy Building!!
